Roland Barthes  - The New Citroën #bettercallaaditya

Roland Barthes Is The Man!

If Roland Barthes had been born in India instead of France, his famous essay The New Citroën might have been called The Old Ambassador and it would have been much noisier, slightly dustier, and would have included at least one mention of someone tying a chicken to the roof. But alas, he was French, and so his 1957 piece in Mythologies gushes over the sleek, futuristic Citroën DS — a car so smooth and stylish it made people think of Gothic cathedrals. Meanwhile, in the India of the same era, our cathedral on wheels was the Hindustan Ambassador — a car that did not so much “glide” as it “rolled forward with mild optimism.” Yet, in a strange way, the Ambassador and the DS share a mythic quality. The DS represented the future; the Ambassador represented that uncle who swears he’ll get broadband “next year” but never does.Barthes begins by calling the Citroën DS “the supreme creation of an era,” as sacred as the cathedrals of medieval Europe. The DS was worshipped in Paris showrooms, displayed like a holy relic. In India, the Ambassador was also worshipped — but mostly because it was the only option for decades. It wasn’t so much a choice as it was a default setting of life. It was the car in which politicians waved at crowds, in which newlyweds posed awkwardly, and in which families of seven squeezed themselves for weddings and funerals alike. The Citroën’s smooth lines spoke of aerodynamics; the Ambassador’s smoothness came from being repainted every election season.In Barthes’ France, the DS looked like it had descended from space. In India, the Ambassador looked like it had been dug out from the earth, cleaned, and then sent back on the road. The DS inspired awe for its futuristic hydraulics — a suspension so advanced it made potholes feel like soft ripples in a pond. The Ambassador had suspension too… if you count the way the entire car bounced as if it were trying to do bhangra over every speed breaker. But in both cases, the semiotic magic was the same: the car was not just a vehicle; it was a cultural statement. The DS told the French, “You are living in the future.” The Ambassador told Indians, “You are living in the nation’s most stubborn metaphor.”Now, let’s bring in Boman Irani from Dhamaal. In that film, his character proudly owns a vintage car (a Studebaker in the movie, but we can pretend it’s an Ambassador for this essay’s sake) and treats it like a royal chariot. He polishes it, pets it, talks to it like it’s a beloved pet dog. Every scratch is an emotional trauma, every dent a personal attack. This is exactly how Barthes describes people reacting to the Citroën — as if the car had a soul and a fragile dignity. The difference? In Dhamaal, the reverence is constantly undermined by slapstick chaos: the car gets wrecked, flipped, dragged, and finally left in ruins. If Barthes had been in that scene, he’d probably write: “Behold, the myth of the Ambassador — transcending mere transportation, entering the realm of tragicomedy, where its symbolic status is destroyed not by time, but by Riteish Deshmukh driving.”Barthes points out that the DS was displayed in showrooms as if it were not a machine but a miraculous apparition. In India, the Ambassador was also displayed in a kind of showroom… which was basically a dusty dealership where the salesman, instead of talking about aerodynamics, would explain how many sacks of rice you could fit in the boot. The DS was admired for its seamless, uninterrupted surfaces — so smooth they seemed untouched by human labour. The Ambassador was admired for its indestructibility — you could see the bolts, the welding marks, and sometimes the owner’s name scratched into the dashboard, but that was part of the charm. The DS pretended to be beyond manufacturing; the Ambassador proudly displayed the fact it was made by people who had chai breaks.What makes the DS essay so funny to apply to India is Barthes’ obsession with “smoothness” as a sign of perfection. The DS, he says, hides the traces of its making — like a magician hiding the rabbit before the reveal. The Ambassador didn’t hide anything. You could hear its making every time you drove it — the gentle rattle of the windows, the deep cough of the engine, the mysterious clunk from the back that everyone ignored. If the DS was a silent film star, the Ambassador was a street performer who shouted his lines and expected applause. Yet, that honesty gave it a kind of mythic reliability.The DS, Barthes argues, turned the act of buying a car into a ritual. People didn’t just purchase it; they became part of a story about modernity, speed, and national pride. In India, buying an Ambassador was also a ritual — though more like joining a secret society where everyone had the same car but pretended theirs was special. Families would perform pujas, put lemon and chillies under the tyres, and insist that “this model is different” even though it was exactly like the one next door. In Dhamaal, Boman’s attachment to his car is almost religious — until the car meets the combined destructive force of bad luck and bad driving. That scene is like a myth deconstructed: the sacred object becomes a wreck, and the audience laughs, both mourning and enjoying the fall of an idol.Another of Barthes’ ideas is that modern technology, when wrapped in style and mystery, becomes a kind of religion. In post-war France, the DS was the high priest of design, preaching the gospel of progress. In India, the Ambassador was more like a village priest who’d been there forever — dependable, respected, but perhaps not the most dynamic sermon-giver. Yet, in both contexts, the cars became more than machines. They were part of how people imagined their own identity. Driving a DS in France in the 1950s said you were sophisticated, forward-thinking. Driving an Ambassador in India in the 1980s said you were respectable, maybe even powerful — especially if you had a red beacon light.Barthes’ metaphor of the DS as a cathedral is perfect, but I’d tweak it for India: the Ambassador was more like a temple. People decorated it with garlands, blessed it before long trips, and occasionally used it to transport actual gods during festivals. The DS inspired devotion because of its design; the Ambassador inspired devotion because it was there for every chapter of a family’s life. It carried politicians to rallies, carried brides to their new homes, and carried students to their first day of college — sometimes all on the same day if the driver was efficient enough.Now, imagine mixing the two worlds. Picture Barthes, in a crisp white kurta, walking into the Dhamaal set where Boman Irani’s beloved car is about to be destroyed. He watches the slapstick chaos unfold: the doors falling off, the paint scratching, the chassis bending like a bad yoga pose. Instead of horror, Barthes smiles knowingly. “Ah,” he says, “the myth collapses, and in its destruction, it is reborn as comedy.” Because that’s the thing about myths: they aren’t just about reverence; they also survive mockery. The DS in France and the Ambassador in India both live on in memory not just because people loved them, but because they were woven into the cultural imagination so deeply that even when we laugh at them, we’re still paying tribute.The DS was all about the illusion of effortlessness — the idea that technology could be magic. The Ambassador, by contrast, was about effort — the sweat of the driver, the bargaining with mechanics, the push-starts when the battery died in the middle of traffic. Yet, in both cases, the car became a story people told about themselves. The DS said, “We are modern.” The Ambassador said, “We are enduring.” And Boman’s character in Dhamaal says, “We are attached to our cars in ways that defy logic — and we will cry when they’re gone, even if we spent most of our time fixing them.”Barthes might have found the Ambassador less “smooth” than the DS, but he would have loved the sheer narrative density of it. Every Ambassador came with a built-in archive of family stories, political rallies, long road trips, and improbable repairs. In semiotic terms, it was a signifier loaded with history, humour, and resilience. And as Dhamaal shows, even when such a symbol is destroyed, it doesn’t disappear — it simply shifts into a new role in the collective memory, from sacred relic to comic legend.So, if The New Citroën is Barthes’ love letter to the idea of the car as a work of art, perhaps The Old Ambassador (with a cameo by Boman Irani) would be the desi sequel — a celebration of the car as a stubborn, lovable companion that carries not just people but an entire country’s sense of itself. The DS floated into the future; the Ambassador trudged through the present. But both, in their own ways, were cathedrals on wheels. And if you’ve ever seen a man weep over a scratch on his bonnet — whether in a Paris showroom or in a Dhamaal chase scene — you’ll know that cars, like myths, are never just metal. They are dreams on four wheels, and sometimes, they are also the punchline.